I put in an inquiry to IOSS about BIOS Saviors, since they've redone their site and BIOS Saviors are in the new graphics. Just got this reply:
Vivian Lu wrote:
Hi Corey,
Thank you for your email. We make some more since we got lots of inquiries for RD1-PMC4.
You can buy from www.frozencpu.com which is our US dealer. They have placed order to us and we can ship to them on end of March.
Should you have any other questions please feel free to contact.
Best Regards,
Vivian Lu
IOSS International Co., Ltd. 17F-9, No.189, Sec2, Keelung Rd., Taipei 110 Taiwan Tel:886-2-2737-1300 ext. 388 Fax:886-2-2737-1381 Email: vivian@ioss.com.tw URL:http//www.ioss.com.tw
so for which boards is RD1-PMC4 matching ? Gigabyte M57SLI ? Any Asus or Elitegroup board ? from internet ads it is hard to tell which BIOS memory the manufacturers put on their boards ?
who can tell ? --Q
Corey Osgood schrieb:
I put in an inquiry to IOSS about BIOS Saviors, since they've redone their site and BIOS Saviors are in the new graphics. Just got this reply:
Vivian Lu wrote:
Hi Corey,
Thank you for your email. We make some more since we got lots of inquiries for RD1-PMC4.
You can buy from www.frozencpu.com which is our US dealer. They have placed order to us and we can ship to them on end of March.
Should you have any other questions please feel free to contact.
Best Regards,
Vivian Lu
IOSS International Co., Ltd. 17F-9, No.189, Sec2, Keelung Rd., Taipei 110 Taiwan Tel:886-2-2737-1300 ext. 388 Fax:886-2-2737-1381 Email: vivian@ioss.com.tw URL:http//www.ioss.com.tw
On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 10:15:07AM +0200, Quux wrote:
so for which boards is RD1-PMC4 matching ? Gigabyte M57SLI ? Any Asus or Elitegroup board ? from internet ads it is hard to tell which BIOS memory the manufacturers put on their boards ?
who can tell ? --Q
The RD1-PMC4 has a 4Mbit LPC flash chip, the Pm49FL004. This should work just fine on any board that wants LPC flash. Best way is to look at the data sheet for the flash part currently on board and compare that to the Pm49LF004 data sheet, but as long as it's LPC it shold work.
Note by work I mean CPU able to read from flash.
For writing, there is still the issue of finding out how to tell the board to allow writing to the flash ROM, but this of course has nothing to do with the BIOS savior.
//Peter
On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 04:59:09PM +0200, Peter Stuge wrote:
On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 10:15:07AM +0200, Quux wrote:
so for which boards is RD1-PMC4 matching ? Gigabyte M57SLI ? Any Asus or Elitegroup board ? from internet ads it is hard to tell which BIOS memory the manufacturers put on their boards ?
who can tell ? --Q
The RD1-PMC4 has a 4Mbit LPC flash chip, the Pm49FL004. This should work just fine on any board that wants LPC flash. Best way is to look at the data sheet for the flash part currently on board and compare that to the Pm49LF004 data sheet, but as long as it's LPC it shold work.
Note by work I mean CPU able to read from flash.
Yeah - note that I can't even get it to do that on the gigabyte m57sli-s4.
Thanks, Ward.
On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 06:03:42PM -0400, Ward Vandewege wrote:
On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 04:59:09PM +0200, Peter Stuge wrote:
The RD1-PMC4 has a 4Mbit LPC flash chip, the Pm49FL004. This should work just fine on any board that wants LPC flash.
[..]
Note by work I mean CPU able to read from flash.
Yeah - note that I can't even get it to do that on the gigabyte m57sli-s4.
That's bad. :( You flashed it on another board, verified OK but doesn't boot? Ouch.
//Peter
On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 12:25:43AM +0200, Peter Stuge wrote:
On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 06:03:42PM -0400, Ward Vandewege wrote:
On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 04:59:09PM +0200, Peter Stuge wrote:
The RD1-PMC4 has a 4Mbit LPC flash chip, the Pm49FL004. This should work just fine on any board that wants LPC flash.
[..]
Note by work I mean CPU able to read from flash.
Yeah - note that I can't even get it to do that on the gigabyte m57sli-s4.
That's bad. :( You flashed it on another board, verified OK but doesn't boot? Ouch.
Well, basically the m57sli refuses to see the chip built into the bios savior. I just flashed an image into another rom chip, and use that to boot LB (keeping my backup original rom chip). I can't boot the m57sli from the pm49fl004 chip in the biossavior, nor can flashrom see it when the switch is set to RD1 instead of ORG.
The biossavior makes hot swapping a lot easier though, even if it does not work as intended.
Thanks, Ward.
On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 06:30:01PM -0400, Ward Vandewege wrote:
That's bad. :( You flashed it on another board, verified OK but doesn't boot? Ouch.
Well, basically the m57sli refuses to see the chip built into the bios savior. I just flashed an image into another rom chip, and use that to boot LB (keeping my backup original rom chip). I can't boot the m57sli from the pm49fl004 chip in the biossavior, nor can flashrom see it when the switch is set to RD1 instead of ORG.
My point was that since we haven't yet enabled flash writes on the board there is no way to program the BIOS savior PMC chip on the m57sli itself. It would need to be programmed on another board.
Or do you mean that flashrom does work on the m57sli but only with non-PMC flash chips?
//Peter
On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 12:54:44AM +0200, Peter Stuge wrote:
On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 06:30:01PM -0400, Ward Vandewege wrote:
That's bad. :( You flashed it on another board, verified OK but doesn't boot? Ouch.
Well, basically the m57sli refuses to see the chip built into the bios savior. I just flashed an image into another rom chip, and use that to boot LB (keeping my backup original rom chip). I can't boot the m57sli from the pm49fl004 chip in the biossavior, nor can flashrom see it when the switch is set to RD1 instead of ORG.
My point was that since we haven't yet enabled flash writes on the board there is no way to program the BIOS savior PMC chip on the m57sli itself. It would need to be programmed on another board.
Or do you mean that flashrom does work on the m57sli but only with non-PMC flash chips?
Let me summarize the issue with the m57sli-s4 and the bios savior:
1. flashrom *works fine* if you don't use a bios savior. Read and write. See http://tracker.linuxbios.org/trac/LinuxBIOS/changeset/2564?new_path=trunk%2F...
2. flashrom *works fine* if you plug in a bios savior and set the switch to 'ORG', meaning you flash the chip you plug into the bios savior - tested with ST parts (including the original part that Richard Smith desoldered from our board for us).
3. flashrom can't see the pm49fl004 part that's built into the bios savior. The board will also not boot if you switch the savior to RD1 (which is that part) after writing the correct image into the bios savior on a different machine. The bios savior works fine in our tyan-based systems.
I hope that clarifies everything!
Thanks, Ward.
Hi Ward
Note by work I mean CPU able to read from flash.
Yeah - note that I can't even get it to do that on the gigabyte m57sli-s4.
Well, i'm confused. Does that mean that it is not possible to flash a bios onboard (not according to the build tutorial) or is it just a problem with the bios saviour.
If it is an problem with the bios saviour it would be nice if you keep us informed if you have more information on that issue. Probably there is also an hint for us how to use the free pads.
Thanks by the way for your nice build tutorial for the M57-SLI-S4. ST
Hi ST,
On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 01:08:52PM +0200, ST wrote:
Note by work I mean CPU able to read from flash.
Yeah - note that I can't even get it to do that on the gigabyte m57sli-s4.
Well, i'm confused. Does that mean that it is not possible to flash a bios onboard (not according to the build tutorial) or is it just a problem with the bios saviour.
It's just a bios savior problem. See the reply I just wrote to Peter.
If it is an problem with the bios saviour it would be nice if you keep us informed if you have more information on that issue. Probably there is also an hint for us how to use the free pads.
Yeah, maybe...
Thanks by the way for your nice build tutorial for the M57-SLI-S4.
You're most welcome.
Thanks, Ward.
-
Corey Osgood -
Peter Stuge -
Quux -
ST -
Ward Vandewege